Plate tectonics is a theory that attributes the past, present and future structures of the Earth's crust to the interactions of rigid lithospheric plates that move over the underlying mantle independently of each other. Reconstructing historical plate movements often provides valuable information to oil and gas companies assessing the formation properties of a particular geographic region (e.g., a hydrocarbon play). Such “paleogeographic reconstruction” provides data on the timing of the formation of basins due to tectonism, tectonic events responsible for the production of sediments and deformation, paleoclimates, and paleotopography, all of which may be used to assess exploration risk.
A number of paleogeographic reconstruction models are available and are widely used for the aforementioned purposes. The manner in which reconstruction models are selected to assess particular geographic regions, however, is suboptimal. In many cases, for example, reconstruction models are chosen for their ease of use or pleasing aesthetics. In other cases, models are chosen based on qualitative assessments of their potential usefulness in evaluating a specific region. These reconstruction model selection techniques focus on each model's superficial qualities instead of the model's quantitative accuracy.